On Aliens, Conspiracies, and the Magical Unknown
Plus, songs of belief and mystery, an emotionally layered alien flick, and alternatives to a salted rim
There’s been a lot of hoopla about the (highly debatable) arrival of extraterrestrials on our planet over the past year. Fuzzy iPhone photos of erratically flying metal kidney beans have become ubiquitous, compounded by the various balloon shootings this past winter and then swirling into hyperdrive with the NewsNation “whistleblower” interview with former intelligence officer David Grusch. For those already trudging through the emotional wear and tear of every day American life, tall tales of flying saucers have barely elicited an eyebrow raise. Yet, for those of us who enjoy the titillation of fantastical sci-fi mythology, it has been a welcomed distraction from the drudgery.
For me, it started out as a fun little dialogue with my friends that quickly evolved into one of those late-night tailspins where I stuff my face with tortilla chips while watching “King of Queens” as I ask myself things like, “Is belief a thought or a feeling?” Who doesn’t love a little salsa and Kevin James with their existential spirals?
Although I’m a feelings-oriented person, I can also stand outside myself and, intellectually, talk myself out of most any feeling. I do this every day. I’m always led first by emotions and, like clockwork, I swoop into those emotions and either reason myself out of them or gaslight myself into oblivion. Take the alien “spotting” from a few weeks ago in Las Vegas. A cop’s body cam caught a fiery object crashing to the earth, which was validated by a 911 call from a resident who reported a mysterious crash site in their backyard at roughly the same time.
When I read stuff like this, I get really excited. This is it! This is when it all comes together. Those feelings get riled up. I’m sucked in. I’m invested. And then, just in time, I pull myself right out of it.
The eyewitnesses described two 10-foot-tall creatures with giant glistening eyes, crouching behind a forklift or some kind of heavy equipment in the yard. That’s when I check out. My initial reaction: these are not people who saw extraterrestrials. These are people who want to believe they did – or at least want us to believe it – but made the profound error in describing these things in the most cliché way possible. That’s how Kellogg’s would design an alien-themed cereal. A tall skinny greenish-grey humanoid with giant glistening eyes. To project one’s likeness or personal preferences onto external phenomenon is such a classic human ego move, like when white people made Jesus look like a hippie in a Wrangler commercial despite all rational data telling us otherwise.
If I was to conjure up an alien likeness, I would try to make it so unhuman-like, so disconnected from Earthly context, that it would make my audience confused and unnerved. Less like the alien that made Joaquin Phoenix crap his pants in Signs, and more like those aliens in Arrival, all big and tentacle-y. Of course, as my husband pointed out, there are bounds to our imagination. You can’t make up something that has zero basis in your observed reality. You can be inventive, but only to a point. Like in Billy Madison, when Adam Sandler says to Ms. Lippy “I drew the duck blue because I’ve never seen a blue duck and I wanted to see one.”
(I can’t tell if this is proving or undermining my point, which has now jumped more tracks than a freight train in Ohio.)
To better understand the origins of this very conventional portrait of alien lifeforms, I turned to early literature. Unsurprisingly, going all the way back to 10th century Japanese narratives and then even earlier to the ancient Greeks, most stories fell somewhere between hippie Jesus and the blue duck – variations on a familiar theme, which, in this case, is that aliens exist and they kind of look like us. Defaulting to our own likeness over and over again seems a touch lazy and predictable, but it also taps into a bigger recurring feeling that humans have experienced since the dawn of time: that we’re not alone and there is something bigger than us out there, even if our ability to comprehend is limited by our own feeble imaginations.
These are all diverging avenues I go down every time my heart and head are at odds over gargantuan concepts like faith and belief, and how they do or don’t intersect with the conspiracy culture that has commandeered so much around humanity’s desire for truth. People love to laud truth seekers. He was an unrelenting seeker of the truth! She won’t stop until the truth is revealed! But whose truth? And to what end?
When I bring up things like aliens in casual conversation – which happens more often than you’d think – I sometimes see the flicker of familiarity in the eyes of the resident conspiratorialist looking for a comrade in their tinfoil hat brigade. I flinch at that familiarity, because I don’t think all conspiracies are created equally, nor are they born out of the same quest for “truth.”
You see, there’s a conspiratorial spectrum. The notch along this spectrum is hubris. As it slides to one side, it shapes a notion of “absolute truth” to suit its personal interests, starting with a convenient truth and molding the theory accordingly. On the other side, it has a posture of humility, seeing no one person or movement as the arbiter of truth but rather revels in the vast, spooky unknown of a universe with no beginning or end. It’s about asking hard questions but expecting no fully crystalized answers. It finds peace not in a conveniently contrived, bullheaded version of truth but rather in the universally level playing field of human existence in which nothing is certain but death and taxes.
So, as I circle back to the initial question at hand: “Do I believe that extraterrestrial beings exist?” I suppose my answer is I don’t know. But I think I’m going to choose to stand uncomfortably on the threshold of a strange, magical unknown than hinge to a more comfortable belief that could miss the bigger picture.
I mentioned earlier the big, tentacle-y aliens from the 2016 film Arrival, starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. I watched it once on a midnight flight home from NYC and then drove home in silence. It’s extremely affecting. After writing the above piece, I decided to rewatch it, hoping the experience would gel it all together. Man, did it ever.
The first interaction between Adams (a linguist) and Renner (a physicist) is on a military helicopter as they’re flying to one of 12 spaceships that have suddenly touched down in cities across the globe. Both are providing distinct yet opposing subject matter expertise to the operation, first illustrated as he reads aloud the opening to her recent book:
“‘Language is the foundation of civilization. It is the glue that holds a people together. It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict.’ It’s great. Even if it’s wrong.”
“It’s wrong?” she replies.
“Well, the cornerstone of civilization isn’t language, it’s science,” he responds, smugly.
The film goes on to make it quite clear who it favors on this point, and I have to say, with all of the heart and soul of a seasoned communicator, I certainly agree.
(It’s a must-see.)
Two songs that underscore this week’s theme, for your listening pleasure:
I know we’ve been deep in the muck of belief systems, so apologies for a jarring non-sequitur… but I don’t like salt on my margarita rim. Apparently, according to the Online Court of Public Opinion, this makes me a fool who has squandered all chances of ever truly experiencing the nuanced, bittersweet petals of citrus delights that could have unfurled in my gringo mouth.
Well, street cred be damned. Here are three alternatives to pure salt for your next cocktail, margarita or otherwise:
Tajin – It seems like this stuff is everywhere right now. It still brings the saltiness, but has the zesty zing of chili peppers and lime. I’ve seen this paired with Palomas, which sounds amazing. Please try it and report back.
Hibiscus – My favorite cocktail at one of our favorite spots here in the western suburbs of Chicago, The Foxtail, has a hibiscus sugar rim and although it’s quite messy, it’s a delicious complement to the citrus.
Sugar – There’s nothing revolutionary here, but a sugar rim is an easy, versatile way to spruce up a cocktail. Mix in cinnamon, pair it with lime or orange zest, the list goes on.
Until next week, cheers! Keep your eyes on the sky and your bar well-stocked.